Jack looked hard at Tim and hesitated, but Philip, curled up luxuriously in his big chair, asked him to proceed.
"You're going to tell an Arabian Night story, Jack."
"Well, it sounds like one."
"Good! I love romance. It's something about buried cities, and Aztecs, and treasure, and the god Huitzilopochtli."
"Oh, bosh! You've been reading Prescott."
"It seems to me," observed Peter, plaintively, "that with all these interruptions we'll never hear the story."
"The first that speaks will be crushed," announced Tim, glaring around. "If you please, Mr. Duval, it's waiting we are."
Jack laughed, and resumed his story.
"While I was at Tlatonac—that is the capital of the Republic—I became mixed up in certain events, political and otherwise. I found I could do nothing I wanted to without assistance; so, as I suddenly remembered our promise to meet here this year, I came straight to London. In fact, I was in such a hurry to find out if you three had remembered the appointment, that I left my luggage at the railway station, and came on by a hansom to Portman Square. This is the reason I am not in evening dress."
"Oh, deuce take your evening dress," said Philip, irritably; "you might have come in a bathing-towel, for all I cared. I didn't want to see your clothes. I wanted to see you. Go on with the story of the buried city."